After it had qualified for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the Serbian national football team also secured a spot at EURO 2024 after a 24-year hiatus and was quite successful at the UEFA Nations League. It may well be said that it has just completed a thriving stretch. Yet the team did not quite hit the heights expected of it in Qatar, which, coupled with fluctuations in the quality of their game during qualifications for the UEFA European Football Championship, sparked some criticism. Dragan Stojković nicknamed Piksi (Pixie, from a cartoon Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks), the national team head coach, responds to his critics in this exclusive interview, also sharing with NIN his thoughts about football, other sports, his career and why he was never voted the world’s best player.
“It is to my great satisfaction that I have managed to deliver on my promise and usher my team in major football tournaments. It’s a burden I had imposed upon myself, but I managed to convince the players and the football community at home that it’s precisely what we would do. I’m beyond happy, because it was indeed difficult to achieve. As for those who think it was easy, I’d be glad to let them give it a try,” Stojković tells NIN.
You’ve said that Serbia will focus on the result at UEFA EURO 2024. Being in the same group with England, Denmark and Slovenia, what would you consider a success?
What’s most important for me is that when the great football party begins in Germany in six months, all my players are healthy and with no injuries, or rather, physically and mentally prepared. It’s the chief condition and only then we can talk about results. Qualifying for the EURO 2024 round of 16 would be a success, and we’ll do our best to make it happen. It’s also our first objective, and we’ll see it from there.
What do you think about the privatisation of football clubs, the largest like Zvezda (Red Star) and Partizan (Partisan) in particular?
Red Star and Partisan are impossible to privatise. It is different with other clubs though.
Why is it impossible to privatise the two?
First of all, there’s a huge number of fans who like and want to have a say. I don’t know anyone with motivation and courage strong enough for the endeavor. The model used by Real Madrid and Barcelona is more realistic, as it allows the fan base to be included in the club membership with voting rights. I don’t think anyone is ready for that. Red Star and Partisan are large systems that are very important in Serbia, and privatisation would be very complicated to pull off. Besides, even if a desire to do it existed, there must be a law to govern privatisations in the sports sector.
An allegation by Nemanja Vidić, also in an interview with NIN, that over the past two years 16 million euros were allocated to you and your team of experts, set off a chorus of disapproval. Was there anything untrue in Vidić’s words? Was the figure included in the official financial report the Football Association of Serbia provided for 2022?
The Assembly of the Football Association of Serbia has regular end-of-year meetings to pass annual financial reports. That particular report was very transparent, and made available to the media. If what Vidić said was true, I would have been a very rich man. Obviously, it wasn’t me in Vidić crosshairs. But I felt I had to respond, because I knew it wasn’t true. My response wasn’t targeted against Vidić, but I felt I ought to tell the public the truth. It wasn’t my intention to criticise him, and I won’t do it, but it surprised me that my technical team and I had been mentioned in that context. The costs incurred by all selections, from the A-Team to futsal teams, and with all taxes and social transfers paid, amount to that figure of EUR16 million. Piksi and his experts are paid nowhere near that amount.
How much do you and your team earn?
Way, way less. The public should know that our premiums and bonuses are not paid from the national budget. We do not get anything from the citizens of this state. Our income depends solely on what we earn.
NIN / Mitar Mitrović
You also said that it wouldn’t be wrong even if you had earned 116 million instead of 16, having noted that it wasn’t the money belonging to the state. Whose money was it, then, and where did it come from?
We are financed depending on results. You have FIFA, UEFA, and there are premiums paid when you qualify for a major tournament. Everything is covered by contracts – the amount paid per player if there’s a win, the amount to be paid to the work community, taxes to be paid to the state, and, in the end, the value of my contract. My contract was verified by 15 people at the Executive Board. Is the figure too small, too high, just right, not enough – we can keep discussing it forever. If you ask me, I’m underpaid. Why? Because I’m looking after my personal interests. If you ask him [Vidić], it’s too much. The value of a contract is determined by a market value and an agreement between two parties. The „116 million“ was a metaphore. Frankly, I find it a bit vulgar to discuss someone’s earnings.
It is clear that politics played a considerable role in the election of the president of the Association. Vidić abandoned the race, and Dragan Džajić was guided back into it from his retirement. Did the fact that Vidić was not close to the ruling Serbian Progressive Party had anything to do with it? It appears impossible to isolate sports from politics….
I did not interfere with the election, nor will I. I neither helped Vidić, nor did I do him a disservice. Whoever runs for the leading post in the Association must assess the situation carefully – is the race worth of your energy. It was clear that with five votes of support it couldn’t be. He just didn’t stand a chance.
Do you work well with Džajić, and what is his vision of the national football association?
Our cooperation is excellent, and you’ll need to ask him about the vision he has for the organisation. We are on the same page in terms of the national team’s ambitions and results. We have managed to produce results, so have no differences to settle.
A year and a half ago you promised to sue the director general of Red Star over a claim that you had been the mastermind behind a plot to strip the club of the title. Did you take legal action, and what do you think about Terzić’s management skills in general?
No, I decided against it. Legal action against whom? The club? It wasn’t Terzić who signed the statement, but the president of Red Star, Svetozar Mijailović. Imagine a head coach of the national team dealing with referees, and stripping a club of a title. And Red Star at that.
What is your relationship with Terzić like?
We haven’t been in touch since. After such statements and attacks, any contact would be meaningless. Again, he is angry, because I have allegedly driven his son away from the Association. I didn’t even know he had worked for the organisation. It’s not true, and I had nothing to do with it. He thinks I pushed his son out, I say I didn’t, and what now? You can think what you want, but that I would engage referees in match-fixing to make Partizan a champion, that’s absolutely insane.
Speaking about a stellar career, many believe that in 1990 an opportunity was missed in Italy to qualify for the finals and be crowned the world champion, and perhaps that it could have saved Yugoslavia from falling apart. What is your opinion?
As for Yugoslavia, I believe that its end was already certain. No one could have saved it. It was top-tier actors that had decided its fate. As for the game, we were close, even though we had had a poor start. The Yugoslav team played against Argentina, with the greatest ever, Diego Maradona. We outplayed them, with ten players at that.
In retrospect, what can you say about the well-known football match between Dinamo and Zvezda, at the Maksimir stadium in the Croatian capital? Did it seem to you that it was then the breakup of Yugoslavia started, or did you believe it was just an isolated incident?
It wasn’t an isolated incident. It was all staged, but, honestly, I don’t think it was the beginning of the war. It was a display of political views at any rate. The Croatian Democratic Union was already winning the elections, with the platform as it was, and there was a different ideology on the other side. And you knew that it wouldn’t end well. You just prayed that things would not get worse. Eventually, the worst happened – the war broke out, ruining everything.
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NIN / Mitar Mitrović